Watched Nick Merkley and Dylan Strome play for Canada last night - they won 4-1 and Strome scored a quality goal.Merkley was as he is in the dub - in the thick of every post whistle scrum, the cause of some, and you can see he has decent heads-up offensive skills, too. Back in the sorry days when Chris Brown was our top offensive prospect or we had hopes for Andy Miele, the arrival of Merkley would have made him by far the top forward prospect. But with Domi, Duclair, Strome, Perlini, Dvorak and Samuelsson all in the pipeline, he's simply just another quality prospect.While losing sucks, we've been stockpiling MUCH needed talent up front the last couple of drafts.And here's hoping Conor Garland is more Martin St. Louis than Brendan Shinnimin!

Finally, I think it would be the bee's knees for us to finish dead last and win the lottery in 2016 and draft Auston Matthews. Cor blimey, I get dizzy thinking of this potential 2017/18 season line up:1st line: Domi / Strome / Duclair2nd line: Boedker / Matthews / Perlini3rd line: Dvorak / Hanzal / Samuelsson/Fischer/Lessio4th line: Merkley / VETERAN? / VETERAN?

Coyotes have three prospected invited to try out for Team Canada! All three should make it, too. Dylan Strome for the first line; Brendan Perlini for the second line and Nick Merkley for the fourth line, or so it would appear.

Like last year, two Coyotes' prospects (though last year they weren't pro teammates at the time) are making two-thirds of Canada's top line. Dylan Strome is playing extremely well. Canada's best forward thus far. A force every time he's on the ice. Brendan Perlini is playing left wing on the line. He's tallied a helper but is around the net all the time. Bad luck/great saves have robbed him of two goals thus far.

Ryan MacInnis and Christian Dvorak are looking solid on Team USA; more so Dvorak who is playing in the top six. Have to say, Auston Matthews is a BEAST.

We've got three players on Team Sweden too. A goalie, forward (Jens Looke) and a defender, I believe. Sorry, don't want to screw up their names. Looke looks like a pesky third liner type; decent smarts.